Actually even pilots in their forties , they are out of the game.
Well, yes and no.
Actually they are in the very middle of the game, but usually they suffer from a severe case of "normalcy bias" (wiki
here), are heavily in debt (house, car) and have large commitments (wife, kids, debt) which makes them not
want to accept reality.
Their way of dealing with it is by sticking their heads in the sand and
hoping that the problem will go away by itself,
hoping that the deflationary spiral in T&C's will somehow not affect them,
hoping that the economy will magically improve and
hoping that companies will automatically give employees good T&C without having to fight for it. Unfortunately
hope is never a good strategy...
p.s. I would not go so far as to say "never listen to old people." There is a lot of timeless knowledge that we can learn from, as some things like airmanship and the laws of aerodynamics will never change. Unfortunately when it comes to very fluid things like the economy, international treaties, government regulations (FTL's) these 'wisdoms' can quickly become obsolete traps. What worked for one generation will perhaps not work for the next generation.